


Cliffside Flowers

by DustOnBothSides



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Kylo Ren Can Cook, Kylux Positivity Week 2020, M/M, Ocean, Soft Kylux, domestic Kylo Ren, exiled AU, tinkerer Hux, when life gives you lemons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:30:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25040155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustOnBothSides/pseuds/DustOnBothSides
Summary: Kylo and Hux have lost the war and were sentenced to spend the rest of their life on a desolate remote planet.Losing everything they used to be should be the greatest punishment of them all, shouldn't it?
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 103
Collections: Kylux Positivity Week 2.0





	Cliffside Flowers

The light of a new day finally pierced a layer of heavy, gunmetal-grey clouds which traced the horizon, and flooded the world with its yellowish light. It reflected off the calm surface of a vast ocean in thousands shifting facets, bleached the dark, pre-dawn hue of craggy cliffs white and breaking against a lighthouse, it entered its windows and fell upon the face of a sleeping man, on the whorls of his dark hair fanned out on the pillow, on the constellation of moles dotting his face.

His eyelids twitched, arms and legs drew closer to the body, and then his eyes opened and blinked in the unpleasantly strong light. He rubbed them with a sleepy mumble and rolled over on his back. 

A brand new day has arrived. Brand new day for Citizen Kylo Ren. 

He sat up and looked around. The room was empty as was the other half of the bed. Blankets there were folded neatly with the puffed-up pillow placed on top of them, as if they were still on the _Finalizer_ , as if they were still a part of anything at all. The warmth had already left the mattress. 

Kylo sighed, rolled over and buried his nose in the sheets. It took him another half an hour to fully wake up, and by that time the light had lost its yellow hue and became the usual, unpleasant white. 

He got dressed, and as he descended the stairs to the ground floor, he kept glancing out of the windows, trying to spot Hux. Knowing him, he has been up and about since before the dawn. Kylo saw the signs wherever he looked - a lightbulb in the spiralling hallway, which had been flickering the evening before, was now emitting a steady glow, one of the water filters in the hydroponics room was fixed and cleaned, kefir in the bag has been mixed recently, there was an empty mug of caf in the sink. 

Kylo had to smile. Ever the busy one… He didn’t think he ever saw Hux waste even a minute on something the man didn’t deem _constructive_. Kylo on the other hand…

He yawned a great big yawn, fixed himself a nice breakfast, and then went outside to his box garden to meditate. His tiny garden of just over three by three metres, surrounded by a tall fence made out of driftwood. Oh, how hard he had to fight to keep this little lot for something that wasn’t constructive… Farm-worthy land was scarce and excepting this little lot, everything else was used for growing calarantum root, nysillim, bristlemelons, and various kinds of gourds and tubers. 

He sat down on a large, flat stone, crossed his legs and relaxed by letting his eyes travel over the tall, slender birches and the dark dwarf pines whose shade was speckled with rosy stars of centaury, over boulders with white-blooming arcus plants growing out of their deep cracks in floods of long, glossy leaves, over the sea buckthorn in the corner. Even the soft grass around Kylo’s sitting stone was covered by tufts of black saltworth with its tiny pink flowers. 

Hux had noted that plants like the arcus or centaury, and especially the glorious lancet sugarbush with its crimson-streaked golden flowers growing above a small pond in the corner next to the entrance, were not supposed to grow in these parts. He had voiced his suspicion that the fact that they thrived so much in there was because of Kylo and mused whether it meant that the light was starting to get the upper hand within the force user. Kylo had been troubled by this at first, but eventually he came to realise how foolish a blind adherence to either the light or the dark is. He decided not to be a plaything of the force anymore and began use it like he used a knife or a hoe. 

He closed his eyes and simply enjoyed the life and the struggle for it he felt all around. He sensed a flock of ash-beaked terns circling above the sea, puffy little stints scuttling across the beach in search of sand worms, schools of herrings and mullets as they darted out of the way of large plated cods, and even the better hidden denizens of the ocean - the gulper greatsharks and the tar-eyes nexu seal. 

Slowly but surely his consciousness expanded while simultaneously its focus contracted into a tiny dot, which soon faded from this plain altogether. 

When he came to, a soft breeze was ruffling his hair. 

His departure from the nothingness left his senses heightened enough for him to sense a hurricane forming over the ocean. It was still about a day away, but the nascent storm spoke to Kylo of the future strength of its winds and the size of waves it would create. 

He could also feel Hux, could feel his fire-like trace within the mass of the cold ocean. It appeared he went diving again. 

Kylo got up and stretched his stiff back. The angle of the sunlight told him it was early in the afternoon. The lighthouse and its adjacent hut were empty and cold. Empty of Hux’s presence. He had been gone since the dawn then. Kylo wondered what was he doing now, but knew he’d find out eventually, so he went to the kitchen and started to fix a dinner for the both of them. Something warm and hearty. The ocean wasn’t exactly warm and with the antiquated diving gear Hux used, he was bound to return frozen to the bone. 

Frozen, but happy. 

Kylo smiled to himself as he grabbed a basket. With a knife in his hand, he went ‘round the garden to cut this or pluck that. 

Hux wasn’t one to openly display his emotions, but whenever he went on these dives, he always returned virtually buzzing with excitement. As for what exactly he had found down there, he was rather tight-lipped about that, only dropping vague hints every now and then. Kylo didn’t pry. It’s not like Hux questioned him about his meditations either. They both had their own little pursuits. Hux’s was picking up pieces of broken machinery and making them work again with the help of such unlikely things as clam shells, fish gut membranes, or melted tree resin. That’s why the lighthouse was equipped with two generators, a fridge, and a harpoon gun as big as Kylo, to name a few. And Kylo had the garden which he tended to. He also made fishing nets, cleaned the lighthouse, and indulged in nude spear-fishing every couple of days. 

Nights they spent together, sleeping both in the nude, warmed and soothed by one-another. Sometimes they made love, sometimes they spoke, huddled under the blankets while storms raged outside, and sometimes they just… were. Just the two of them. Together.

Kylo wasn’t sure he had ever felt so peaceful before. He knew this exile was supposed to be a punishment. This planet was virtually abandoned, away from any trading route, and now that it was known as the prison of former Supreme Leader Kylo Ren and former general of the First Order Armitage Hux, even most smugglers kept their distance. The aboriginal Sritu, short-statured amphibians with an oarfish-like appearance, were a simple folk who kept to themselves and only visited the two prisoners once or twice a month to trade something or to have Hux fix some of their primitive machinery in exchange for scrap metal, wiring, or cloth. 

Once in a blue moon, a New Republic ship passed through the atmosphere, sometimes hovering high above the lighthouse. So high, one could only see it as a small, glassy outline in the sea of white-streaked green. 

During these occasions, Kylo’s sharp senses had caught a whiff of glee with a heavy dose of righteousness emanating from the ship. And recently also frustration. Ever increasing frustration. It never failed to make him chuckle. 

Chancellor Organa, Rey, and their merry group of friends had apparently thought that locking the Jedi Killer up together with the Starkiller would be a worse punishment for the two of them than any kind of prison. Well, the joke was on them. 

Back in the kitchen, he finished dicing up some tubers, covered them with chopped herbs and seaweed, and placed fillets of cod on top. Next he poured cream with melted butter over the dish and finished it with a layer of breadcrumbs mixed with grated cheese. Putting the whole thing in the oven, he dusted some crumbs off his apron and made himself some caf. 

Then he gazed out of the window. 

The hut where the kitchen was had views of the lagoon down below, but instead of admiring the ocean, Kylo was watching the first mottled petrels return to their nests on the steep, sharp cliffs towering above the opposite side of the beach. 

A sudden idea forming in his mind, he checked the oven, lowered its temperature, and, grabbing a bucket, rushed outside and down the winding set of extremely narrow stairs chiselled into the rock, which lead all the way to the ocean. It might’ve been a bit early for that, but once Hux would return, they’d have dinner, perhaps even a bath, and then they’d fall into the bed and wouldn’t leave until the next morning, by which time the storm would already be raging above the peninsula. 

He stopped close enough to the ocean for the waves to wash over his toes and took a good, long look around. 

There it was. 

Small, slimy clusters of seeds. They were released by the giant deepwater corals whenever the sea got choppy so the waves could spread them around. The seeds themselves were edible - nutty with an earthy flavour to them - and the globules of slime surrounding them were sweet and could easily be fermented into wine which Hux was fond of. 

Kylo rolled up the legs of his trousers and ran into the waves with more joy than a thirty-four years old convicted war criminal was supposed to express. He waded to deeper waters and tried to snatch seed clusters riding on foamy crests of teal-blue waves. It was no easy task. The clusters were slippery and if he squeezed them too hard, they separated into individual seeds. He managed to scoop a particularly large one, when one of the bigger waves crashed into him, toppling him over and sending him face-first into the water. He quickly scrambled to his feet and collected the spilled clusters before current could carry them away. 

More and more were washed out, which he could’ve regarded as a portent of the upcoming storm’s strength, but he was too busy trying to get as many as possible. At one point his bucket couldn’t hold any more, so he used his tunic as a pouch. He ran here and there, grasping, slipping, falling, and getting up again. The New Republic ceased to exist for him, and with it the loss he had suffered, the humiliation of a public trial broadcasted all over the galaxy, the look in Chancellor Organa’s eyes, Rey’s stony countenance, the triumphant smirk on Dameron’s face. 

He fell again, and when he got up, he found himself wrapped in a thick bundle of sugar kelp. 

_‘Another fine catch’_ , he thought to himself, as if it wasn’t the kelp that caught _him_.

Trying to untangle himself with one hand while holding his tunic-pouch closed with another, he shambled onto dry land. All around him, the petrels watched that odd creature’s odd dance, loudly commenting on his lack of grace. 

Suddenly he noticed a flash of unusual colour to his left. 

It was the neon yellow on Hux’s diving suit. 

The redhead climbed up on a depression in one of the cliffs created by the waves’ eroding touch, removed the virtually prehistoric breathing apparatus connected to two oxygen tanks from his mouth and took his fins off. Pulling off his balaclava as well, he shook his head to allow his hair some freedom. Kylo watched, mesmerized by how vivid the soft, somewhat longish mane stood out against the drab backdrop of pale, ragged cliffs. 

Then Hux noticed him as well. He took his gear and carefully made his way onto the beach. 

When he got to Kylo, he dropped everything into the sand, and before Kylo had a chance to ask how the dive went, Hux threw himself at him and gave him a long, deep kiss, passionate in spite of the chill clinging to his skin. They both crashed to the ground, and when Hux finally released him - the both needed to breathe - he was grinning. Actually _grinning_.

“That good, eh?” Kylo remarked, blush tingeing his cheeks. 

“I finally got in.”

“Hm? Where?”

“There’s an underwater base down there. It’s been closed for decades, but it’s virtually undamaged. It was a pain to get the entrance to open, but I finally did it. You should see it there! It’s huge! The tech, the droids… it’s a bit antiquated, but I can upgrade it without any trouble. There is an actual comm array, would you believe it?! But… what’s the matter?”

Hux’s enthusiastic smile faded when he noticed Kylo’s troubled expression. 

“Hux. Are… are you planning to leave?”

There was a moment of silence, interrupted only by the sound of waves and the cawing of petrels. The moment went on. Kylo felt guilty for causing Hux to lose his radiant smile, but the grip of anxiety was too strong. To tell the truth, he didn’t want to leave. Didn’t want to return to a life of constant conflict, of hate and distrust. Couldn’t bear the thought that he might regress into a man who felt no qualms about treating this wonderful creature straddling him like a mere punch-bag. 

“I-…” Hux said, but then his words left him.

He looked into those brown, amber-speckled eyes and lowered himself onto the broad chest. 

“…I suppose I don’t.” he muttered. “But there is much I can do with the tech that is there. It’s funny. This whole time I was trying to find a way to leave, to get in touch with someone still loyal to us, but now that you asked, I just… things are good the way they are, aren’t they?”

Kylo smiled and stroked Hux’s hair. 

“They sure are.” He mumbled and pulled the redhead into another kiss, this time gentle and unhurried. 

When they finally broke apart, Hux sat up, and Kylo saw, to his surprise, the sparkle in his eyes was back, as was the smirk. 

“Hah! This planet will be our base of operations then! When I’m done with it, it’ll become a paradise. Everyone will want to come _here_. But I won’t let them - only those deserving, those still loyal to us.”

“That’s my General.” Kylo chuckled and then laughed, laughed with relief until his eyes filled with tears. 

“By the way, Kylo. Why are we covered in slime?”

Suddenly the former Supreme Leader remembered what had he been doing there. 

“The seed clusters! And- _oh no!_ I have dinner cooking in the oven!” 

He jumped up, collected Hux’s diving gear and the bucket while Hux grabbed the bundle of sea weed, and together they ran up the stairs towards the cabin, which was filled by the scrumptious, homely scent of a perfectly baked fish pie. 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Soft Kylux is my life. 
> 
> Kudos and comments will be much appreciated.


End file.
